Gust alleviation is a well-known method within the aircraft industry. Gust alleviation devices sense atmospheric perturbations and regulate the response of the aircraft accordingly.
It has been known to disable such devices during pilot induced accelerations.
Such teachings are illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,236,478, issued to Adams et al on Feb. 22, 1966.
While the aforementioned concepts are generally simple in nature, their application to hardware has been anything but simple to implement.
Most such systems are extremely complex and intricate.
What even compounds the problem further is that every aircraft control system has to be designed specifically to alleviate gusts. Therefore, it is not always possible to adapt prior art gust alleviation systems with newer aircraft.
The present invention has developed a very simple gust alleviation system which is easily adaptable to most aircraft control systems utilizing standard, off-the-shelf circuitry.
The invention features a universal-type gust alleviation system which can be tailored to different aircraft control systems with a minimum of adjustment.
The inventive concept has found that most current systems comprise G-command/stability augmentation controls. Using these in-place systems, the subject invention can be easily implemented, wherein gust alleviation signals from the inventive circuitry can be added with minimum adjustment to existing flap command signals and stability augmentation loops.